The sign on the door says “Do Not Feed the Bears.” You’re already sold.
Kims Deli Market does not look like a Korean bagel shop from the outside, and it doesn’t try to. Tucked into the corner of Songridangil — the strip of cafés and restaurants that runs between Seokchon Lake and Olympic Park — the orange-fronted shop reads more like something teleported from a San Francisco side street than a Songpa-gu neighborhood staple. That’s entirely intentional.
The American General Store That Sells Bagels
Step through the entrance flanked by wooden fruit crates and a miniature shopping cart stuffed with tulips, and the premise becomes clear fast. This is not a bagel café. It is a fully committed fantasy of an American deli market — the kind that exists in a certain nostalgic imagination of California, all cluttered wooden shelves, hanging dried herbs, ropes of onions swaying from the ceiling, Edison bulbs casting everything amber. Vintage platform scales sit on the counter. Staffordshire dog figurines stand among jars labeled Premium Earl Grey. An American flag hangs off the shelving. A large mural of someone lounging in the sun on what appears to be a West Coast patio fills an entire wall. The cashier sign glows red. Philadelphia cream cheese blocks are stacked near the register.
The display counter runs along one side of the room in tiered wooden shelves — a full market spread of bagels in every permutation, each one labeled with handwritten orange and yellow price cards. Tomato Basil. Sweet Pumpkin. Diavola Pepperoni. Cinnamon Pecan. Olive. Jalapeño. Plain pretzel. The density of it all, set against the clutter of Muir Glen tomato cans and Bob’s Red Mill bags tucked underneath, sells the general store bit completely.
The San Francisco Concept
The branding leans heavily into a San Francisco reference that feels both earnest and affectionate. The menu poster is built around the Golden Gate Bridge. Sandwich names run through the Bay Area lexicon: the San Francisco Classic, the Golden Gate Sunset, the Kim Sea Salmon — a nod to the owner’s name and Pacific Rim produce in equal measure. A printed card in the teal shelving unit explains that the owner wanted to bring the happiness of fresh bagels she experienced in the city to Seoul. It reads like a mission statement written on a napkin and then framed anyway.
The concept holds. There’s something genuinely cheerful about the whole operation — the “Eat Fresh, Buy Local” banners, the chicken and fresh eggs signage on the door, the small toy cows arranged next to an American flag on a shelf. It’s maximalist and American-nostalgic in the same way a good diner is: you don’t analyze it, you just order something.
The Bagels
All bagels at Kims Deli Market are made from 100% rice flour — a point the branding makes emphatically and repeatedly. The texture lands somewhere between a conventional bagel and something denser, with a chew that suits the thick, loaded fillings. Worth noting: the rice flour used is a high-protein baking variety that does contain gluten, so this isn’t a gluten-free operation despite the wheat-free flour. Bagels are baked fresh from six in the morning, and the lineup rotates through a roster broad enough to sustain multiple visits.
The signature is the Tomato Basil — a glazed, tomato-red round split and filled with cream cheese, displayed on the counter on a bed of green moss like a small produce stand centerpiece. The Sweet Pumpkin arrives in its own miniature gourd shell. The Diavola Pepperoni comes drizzled with sauce. Plain, Everything, White Sesame, Multigrain, Blueberry — the base bagels run from around 3,500 to 4,800 won; specialty varieties push higher.
The sandwiches are where the real argument for a detour gets made. Six combinations build on the bagel lineup: the San Francisco Classic loads egg, bacon, and cheese onto an olive spinach or plain bagel with sweet cream sauce; the Kim Sea Salmon layers smoked salmon, seaweed, and Italian cream cheese; the Golden Gate Sunset goes avocado, egg mayo, and ham with sweet apple chili sauce; the Spicy Songpa-style swings local with galbi and kimchi mayo. The salmon sandwich in particular — split open, cross-section showing the full stack of pink fish against herb cream cheese and tomato — is the kind of thing that photographs well and eats better. Clam chowder soup rounds out the menu for anyone who wants something warm alongside.
The Space
The interior is compact but arranged to feel like more than it is — seating at a handful of wooden tables, a teal shelving unit fronted with a scrolling security gate that doubles as décor, a rolling cart parked in the middle of the floor like it arrived from a backstage. There is something genuinely disorienting about standing in Songpa-gu surrounded by hanging onions, American flag bunting, and a mural of a Californian afternoon — the kind of place that makes you briefly forget which city you’re in. The open doorway onto the covered terrace lets in daylight and connects to a small outdoor patio with folding bistro chairs, palm trees in wooden planters, and a view back out to the street. The whole place smells like baked bread and the kind of good chaos that comes from someone decorating without restraint and having it somehow work.
Other Locations
The Songridangil shop is the original, but Kims Deli Market has since expanded to a handful of other spots worth knowing about. The Lotte Department Store Jamsil branch sits in the basement food hall (B1F, exit 4 toward Adventure) and opens daily from 9:30 AM, making it an easy stop before or after a day around Lotte World. The Gasan Public branch is in Geumcheon-gu, inside the Gasan Digital Complex shopping complex. The Ilsan location, the largest of the four, runs with a roomier footprint and two floors — a different scale from the cluttered intimacy of the original, but carrying the same rice bagel lineup and San Francisco aesthetic.
Kims Deli Market Songridangil is at 13 Baekjegobun-ro 45-gil, Songpa-gu, Seoul.
Additional branches at Lotte Department Store Jamsil B1F, Gasan Public (Geumcheon-gu), and Ilsan (76-3 Janghang-ro, Ilsan-dong-gu, Goyang). Instagram: @kims_delimarket.
“Do Not Feed the Bears” — as if the bagels weren’t already gone.
